Waking Up

I teach Wednesday nights again this semester. This is mostly good, because it's my only class and teaching at night leaves me a lot of time during the day to write or have meetings or stare out the window. But I'm noticing it is getting harder every semester to teach late Wednesday night and then get up Thursday morning to work. It takes much longer to wake up and get going. It takes longer to regain my enthusiasm for work. And all this is made doubly hard by the challenges I'm facing with my back and body.

Last night (Thursday) I had agreed to give a lecture in a colleague's class. By the time I got home from that I felt like I could barely move my neck. I crawled into bed next to E. and whole parts of my body just throbbed--my mid-back, especially, and all along the sciatic nerve, going pretty much from shoulder to ankle. It felt impossible to get comfortable. I finally fell asleep frustrated and angry. Frustrated that my body couldn't withstand two nights of teaching--it's not like it's back-breaking work, for chrissakes. Frustrated that all of my efforts to strengthen my body--yoga, pilates, strength-training, cardio--don't protect me more from these moments. Frustrated that I'm 34 and have to be so careful with my health.

Once I did fall asleep, my dreams were unsettling. There was the recurrent dream I have where I've done something to make E. mad, something unforgiveable (I never remember what this thing is, and it's not really the point). He refuses to talk to me he's so angry, and I get more and more hysterical trying to get him to listen to me, to talk to me. I become a monster, screaming for attention. In the other dream, I'm on a trip and have lost something or it's been stolen, and I can't get home no matter how hard I try.

E. took both girls to school this morning and I rested in bed an extra half-hour, and then did some house chores and have been reading. I'm heading into a yoga session, and I know I will feel better after that. Maybe it'll soften me up for some gratitude, too, or some awareness. I'm pretty sure there's something for me to learn in all of this. I just wish, in these moments, it wasn't so hard to see.